Almost one-fourth of the ice in the West Antarctic are said to be unstable. According to the lead author of the study, Andy Shepherd, a polar scientist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, some ice sheets in parts of Antarctic has thinned by extraordinary amounts.
It is believed that the problem is due to the great volume of ice that melted from the ice sheet over the past 25 years. Data show that the pattern of the glacier thinning has spread across 24% of West Antarctica since 1992. Moreover, it was found out that some lose ice, five times faster compared in the early 1990s.
Base on the study the ice has thinned by 400 feet on some places like Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier1. The ice sheet and its glaciers are said to melt underneath as warming as sea water causing the ice to be thinned by 400 feet in few places in Antarctica, according to New Atlas.
"Along a 1,850-mile stretch of West Antarctica, the water in front if the glaciers are too hot," Shepherd told the Guardian."This causes melting of the underside of the glaciers where they grind against the seabed. The melting lessens the friction and allows the glaciers to slide more quickly into the ocean and therefore become thinner. The glaciers also from the East and West Antarctica had increased the global sea level by 4.6 mm since 1992. Scientists have also found that ice loss rate has tripled since 20122.
"We can see clearly now that a wave of thinning has spread rapidly across some of Antarctica's most vulnerable glaciers, and their losses are driving up sea levels around the planet," she added.
The melted ice is not the sea ice seen floating around Antarctica that melts and refreezes with the season rather they are freshwater ice on the huge ice sheets and in the glaciers that cover most of the continent.
